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@ -1,96 +0,0 @@ |
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# sayuri |
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## Hardware |
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HP Z440 workstation. |
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* [Intel Xeon E5-2683 v4](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/91766/intel-xeon-processor-e52683-v4-40m-cache-2-10-ghz.html) |
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* 4×4 GiB DDR4 2400 MHz ECC memory |
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* 250GB Samsung 970 Evo Pro NVMe SSD |
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* 256GB micron MTFDDAK256TBN-1AR15ABHA SATA SSD |
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* 2TB Toshiba HDWA120 HDD |
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* Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 (8 GiB VRAM) |
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### Mods |
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#### Fan |
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The original fans are really loud if you run them at a higher speed. |
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What fans are used depend on the exact model of the Z440, |
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mine had a Delta QUR0912VH as rear case fan, |
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a Delta AFB0912VH as front fan |
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and a Foxconn PVA092G12S as CPU fan. |
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Since the firmware only allows dynamic fan control via Intel QST, |
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which is not supported in the kernel, |
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the “minimum fan speed” set in the firmware configuration is always used. |
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I replaced all three fans (rear case fan, front “PCIe” fan, CPU fan) with aftermarket products. |
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For the rear case fan and CPU fan I used Noctua NF-A9 PWM fans, |
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for the front fan an Arctic F9 PWM (for the sole reason that it is cheaper). |
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Since HP decided to use different connectors for all of the fans |
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(with the CPU fan connector having a proprietary 6-pin connector), |
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I had to get creative with plugging them in. |
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One alternative suggested by Michael Stapelberg in [his article on fan replacement in a HP Z440](https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-08-28-silent-hp-z440-workstation/) |
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is to remove the guard rails of the fans. |
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Since this is destructive and I might want to sell the fans again if I don’t use them anymore, |
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I decided against this |
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and instead opted for connecting them manually with cheap jumper cables. |
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This certainly is not the prettiest solution, but it works. |
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As for the CPU fan, |
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the fifth and sixth wire are actually not needed |
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and a 4-pin PWM fan can be plugged into the connector (with jumpers). |
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#### CPU |
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The original CPU that came in my model was an Intel Xeon E5-1620 v4 CPU |
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with 4 cores (8 threads), |
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a base clock speed of 3.5 GHz |
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and a boost clock speed of 3.8 GHz. |
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To achieve better multicore performance, |
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I upgraded it to an Intel Xeon E5-2683 v4, which can be found used for semi-cheap on AliExpress. |
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It has 16 cores (32 threads), |
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a base clock speed of 2.1 GHz |
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and a boost clock speed of 3 GHz. |
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While the CPU worked out-of-the box with the 2020 firmware revision I had on it, |
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it did not offer frequency control in linux (and therefore stayed at its base clock). |
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Upgrading to the newest firmware did not fix this issue. |
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A workaround is to enable CPU HWPM in the firmware, |
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which strips the kernel from frequency control and instead hands it to the firmware, |
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which at least allows the CPU to reach 2.7 GHz |
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Since this setting makes it impossible to determine the CPU clock via `cpupower frequency-info`, |
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they have to be obtained by running `grep -E '^cpu MHz' /proc/cpuinfo` (one line for every thread). |
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However, all CPUs compatible with the socket of this system (2011-3) share the same problem: |
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They suffer from many security vulnerabilities, |
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the mitigation of which slows them down massively. |
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A possible workaround is to disable mitigations (https://make-linux-fast-again.com/), |
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which, however, makes the CPU vulnerable to all those attacks again! |
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This is implemented by the `yolo` specialisation, |
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which can be selected at boot. |
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The result of this is that, |
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while it has double the cores and is a desktop/server CPU, |
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it still is around 15 % slower (!) than my laptop’s Ryzen 7 5850U in multithreaded synthetic workloads. |
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It looks even worse in single-threaded workloads, |
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in which my laptop is five times as fast. |
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#### Memory |
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I have not yet upgraded the memory for cost reasons. |
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It still is the original 4 sticks of Hynix HMA451R7AFR8N-UH (4 GiB DDR4 2400 MHz ECC). |
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An upgrade is necessary due to many processes’ memory usage scaling linearily with CPU cores, |
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the prime example being compiling with `make -j32` et al. |
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#### Conclusion |
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Is it worth it? |
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Probably not, especially as a desktop machine. |
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It might come in handy at a later time as a server. |
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## Purpose |
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Tasks that require a decent amount of GPU power |
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and/or have to run while I do other things (on my laptop). |
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## Name |
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Sayuri Kurata is a student from *Kanon* |
